Some teachers have asked for the children to be sent to school at the age of five instead of seven. This savours of another confession that the "pure" oral method had not done what was expected of it at first. First, the demand was for the method itself; then came requests for more teachers, so that, the classes being smaller, each pupil should receive more attention; this meant more money, and so this was asked for; then day schools would remedy the failure by giving the pupils opportunities of talking with the public in general; then we were told the teachers were unskilful; finally, more time is needed. And yet the _language_ of the pupils is no better to-day than it was in 1881, even though they were at school only four or five years then as opposed to nine or ten now.
To Addison's _Report on a Visit to some Continental Schools for the Deaf_ (1904-1905) we are indebted for the following information. The new school at Frankfort-on-Maine, accommodating forty or fifty children at a cost of £40 to £50 per head, is modelled on the plan of a family home. The main objects are to obtain good speech and lip-reading and to use these colloquially; the work is very thorough and the teaching very skilful. At Munich those of the hundred pupils who have some hearing are separated from the others and taught by ear as well as eye. At Vienna (Royal Institution) a small proportion of the pupils are day scholars, as they are at Munich, and the teaching is, of course, carried on by the oral method, as it is all over Germany. Here, however, the teachers "think it impossible to educate fully all deaf-mutes by the oral method only." In the Jews' Home at Vienna the semi-deaf are taught by the acoustic method, and are not allowed to see the teacher's lips at all. At Dresden, a large school of 240 pupils, the director favours smaller institutions than his own, considers the oral method possible for all but the "weak-minded deaf," and divides his pupils into A, B and C divisions, according to intellect. In the first division good speech is obtained. Saxony boasts a home for deaf homeless women, grants premiums for deaf apprentices, and trains its teachers of the deaf in the institution itself--a good record and plan. In the royal institution at Berlin Addison saw good lip-reading and thorough work, though the deaf in the city--as in most of the schools--signed. The men in Berlin "like the adult deaf generally, were all in favour of a combination of methods, and condemned the pure oral theory as impracticable." At Hamburg, again, "hand signs" were used at least for Sunday service. Schleswig has two schools. Pupils are admitted first to the residential institution, where they are instructed for a year, and are then divided into A, B and C classes, "according to intellect." The lowest class (C) remain at this institution for the rest of the eight years, and a "certain amount of signing" is allowed in their instruction. A and B classes are boarded out in the town and attend classes at a day school specially built for them, being taught orally exclusively.